ARTICLES ABOUT COLD CASE BY DATE - PAGE 5

Eric Naposki was backing his car out the driveway of his Greenwich home Wednesday morning, on his way to another day as an athletic trainer in a local gym, when his past caught up with him. Police from California, assisted by local police, blocked his car, drew their guns and arrested him on the spot in the 1994 slaying of a California millionaire. Police allege that Naposki, a former UConn linebacker who bounced around NFL training camps for several years before becoming a football god in Barcelona, fired six shots into William Francis McLaughlin as part of a scheme with his then-girlfriend to cash in on a $1 million insurance policy.

She was a 10-year-old girl with solemn eyes who walked away from the YMCA's Camp Sloane on July 16, 1952, and was never seen again. Was she homesick for the family ranch in Sundance, Wyo., and searching for a phone, or an escape from tent-mates with whom she had roughhoused the day before? An intense search on the ground and in the air yielded clues that went nowhere. Ever since there's been a 57-year stream of theories about what happened at 8:45 that morning, when Connie Smith vanished from Route 44 near Belgo Road.

It's the biggest week of the year for TV series finales. Dozens of shows say farewell for now, either by tying up their action or leaving stories gaping wide open with cliffhangers. Prominent among them tonight is the finale of "Brothers & Sisters" (ABC, 10 p.m.), which promises a resolution to its most recent crisis (a brother missing in Mexico, even before flu is detected). The second half of a two-part murder case on "Cold Case" (CBS, 9 p.m.) closes that show's season.

Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, 36, is engaged to Italian yacht-company owner Fabrizio Politi, 34, who is said by one report to have given the singer known as Ginger Spice a $310,000 diamond ring. The couple have been dating since they met in Florence in December. John Rich - half of the top country duo Big & Rich and host of CMT's "Gone Country" - got married last month to his longtime girlfriend Joan Bush. Molly Ringwald and at least one of her children will be pretty in pink this summer.

By DAVID ALTIMARI and DAVID OWENS; Courant Staff Writers, December 9, 2008

Forensic science brought the families of three Hartford girls - two found slain and one who vanished in the 1980s - to Superior Court in Hartford Monday where two decades of emotion exploded in a courtroom against a man now accused in the crimes. The same science has also raised more doubts about the state's conviction of another man who has been in jail for 20 years in one of the deaths. Norma Cruz, whose 13-year-old daughter was found dead in 1987, screamed at Pedro Miranda, 51, of New Britain, who is facing charges of murder, felony murder, kidnapping and capital felony in the three cases.

Even as the years went by, Norma Cruz never gave up hope that someday police would catch the person who killed her 13-year-old daughter after abducting her as she walked to middle school one morning more than 21 years ago. "I prayed all the time that something would happen before I die. I never gave up hope," Cruz said Sunday night. Last week her prayers were answered when detectives from Connecticut knocked on the door of her Springfield home and told her they were about to arrest Pedro Miranda, 51, a man who had lived in the same Collins Street apartment building as the Cruz family, in the death of her daughter.

Within a span of three years in Hartford in the mid-1980s, three teenage girls disappeared or were found slain, and in each case, it seemed, there was a connection - Pedro Miranda. Hartford detectives interviewed Miranda, separately, about each, but never developed enough evidence to arrest him. In one case, the death of 17-year-old Carmen Lopez, police arrested and a jury convicted another man who is now serving 60 years in prison for murder. It wasn't until this past June that investigators were able to tie Miranda, a registered sex offender, to any of the cases.

Hartford Police Detectives Michael Lopez and Omayra Martinez-Baidy have earned an A for persistence. They tracked down and arrested an alleged rapist 14 years after a heinous crime. The cold case might have remained unsolved had the detectives not followed up on a request from the victim's brother to give it a second look. The victim, 14 at the time of the rape in 1994, was baby-sitting at a neighbor's home when the rapist, wearing a mask and latex gloves, took advantage of an unlocked door to enter and attack her. Her terror is unimaginable.

The TV writers' strike that shut down production on most shows allowed the star of "Cold Case" to make an extended visit back home in Connecticut. "It was great to just hang out with the family or go to the mall," Kathryn Morris said at a CBS party in Hollywood, thrown as part of the TV critics' press tour. Away from the rancor of the strike and its ramifications, Morris, a graduate of Windsor Locks High School who also attended schools in Farmington, said she could enjoy the little things.

Crime investigation dramas are more popular every year, on TV and in movies, worldwide. The new film series starting today at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art titled "Cold Case," showcases crime-fighting movie dramas from Bulgaria, Italy, Serbia and Iceland. The series complements the "What Lies Beneath?" exhibition, which opens Nov. 6. First up is "Investigation," Iglika Triffonova's thriller about the only female detective on the police force in Sofia, Bulgaria, who is called in to solve a missing-person case.